Video marketing

The Rise of Video Marketing and Its Impact on Brands

  • On : January 13, 2023

It’s understandable why video marketing has become so popular in recent years. The rise of streaming platforms like YouTube and the widespread adoption of smartphones has made it easier for businesses to create and share video content.Read more

Tik Tok

TikTok: This content marketing strategy will blow your mind

  • On : December 1, 2022

TikTok is a well-known social media app that enables users to create, watch, and share 15-second videos captured using mobile devices or webcams. The app is renowned for its highly engaging user base and addictive nature because of its customized feeds of amusing short films set to music and sound effects.

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Mellissah-Smith-Awards

Entering Awards as a Marketing Strategy

  • On : September 22, 2022
As a serial entrepreneur, I have always watched with interest people who enter and win awards. It’s been a pastime of mine that has created curiosity around the paths that other entrepreneurs take. But it has taken almost 25 years in business for me to realize that entering awards needs to be at the forefront of any startups marketing strategy – and I should know why.

In full transparency, Robotic Marketer always includes a list of awards that companies should enter or at least consider in every marketing strategy developed. It’s an important part of the marketing mix and can add a lot of value to an omni-channel marketing approach.

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How To Use Software's to Improve Your Marketing Tactics

How To Use Software’s to Improve Marketing Tactics

  • On : July 4, 2022

In 2009, a now well-known slogan was introduced by Apple – ‘There’s an App for that’. The catchphrase was referring to the number of apps that Apple had available on its store, a store that can’t be accessed outside of its own network of devices. Now, more than a decade later, Apple aren’t the only ones that have ‘an app for that’. There is seemingly apps and software for every possible use case. For marketers, this software is called MarTech or AdTech.Read more

Working desk and laptop with business chart

What Marketing Looks Like in 2022, and How Marketers Should Adapt

  • On : February 3, 2022
Marketing is not about seeking customer attention or persuading them to purchase, but rather engaging customers to interact and to deliver meaningful values about the brand’s products and services. The pandemic certainly has posed many challenges to companies and their marketing teams, driving them to adapt to the newest social, economic, and technological trends. Stepping into 2022 with a fresh start and an open mind, a savvy marketer should watch out for these trends, learn how to adapt fast, and stay ahead of the learning curve, before the competitors. Read more

data infographic

A Guide To Data-Driven Marketing Strategies

  • On : September 15, 2021

What is data-driven marketing?

Data-driven marketing is a strategy that focuses on the approach of optimizing brand communications based on customer information. This looks at how consumer behavior has changed over the recent years with the help of technology, allowing consumer data to be analyzed and collected, then used to shape the nature of future marketing activities. New technology is making it easier for marketers to track and provide more personalized marketing campaigns towards their customers by analyzing the data in which has been collected. This collected data is called big data and is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign, especially in this current rapidly changing environment. This data allows marketers to understand current and new consumers’ ever-changing needs and hidden market opportunities.

 

Benefits of Data-driven marketing

Companies can use data-driven strategies to evaluate and organize their data to serve their customers and consumers better. An organization may contextualize and personalize its marketing to customers by leveraging data to drive its activities, resulting in a more customer-centric approach. It allows your business to understand your customers better and develop more targeted offerings appealing directly to their needs. As well as overall optimizing your business operations, a data-driven marketing strategy allows marketers to use their time better, allowing less time to be spent on basic analysis and more time on strategy development and look at the bigger picture.

 

How to Create Data-driven Marketing 

So, let’s talk specifics. When considering a data-driven marketing strategy, it is important to understand the key elements involved. Therefore, marketers looking to extend into data-based marketing must understand every element and follow these steps to ensure the true value of a data-driven marketing strategy is obtained.

1: Set a well-defined goal 

At number 1 is the need for setting a clear and achievable goal. In every marketing campaign, well-defined goals need to be set from the beginning of the campaign. For example, whether your business wants to gain exposure or develop higher customer satisfaction rates, any of these set goals need to be measurable, allowing firms to track their progress towards the intended goal and make necessary changes if needed. There is also a need for goals to be developed alongside deadlines, thereby ensuring that marketing campaigns remain on time and constantly progress.

2: Understand your target audience 

Secondly, to achieve success, you must understand your target market. Marketing strategies that emphasize a personalized customer experience perform significantly better in the long run. One way to get better control of your marketing is to continually improve the data quality- applying data checks to confirm the accuracy and reliability of your collected information. Given that data is constantly changing with consumer trends, a constant need for accurate, current, and updated information underpins all success within a data-driven marketing strategy.

Another way to ensure you are meeting the consumer needs of your target audience is to use predictive analytics. By doing so, marketers can identify consumer behavior patterns in company data, make key changes to relevant strategies, and help explain recent trends before they occur. This data can then identify which customers are considered high quality (business will put in time and effort with these) and which are considered low-quality customers which are not worth the business putting time and resources into targeting. Recent research by Invesp showed that 88% of marketers use data obtained by third parties to understand their consumers better. In addition, businesses that use data-driven personalization recorded between five and eight greater ROIs within marketing budgets.

3: Select your best marketing channels 

Next on the list is coordinating your marketing channels. The omnichannel approach works to combine, align, and coordinate all marketing across the different channels available. When selecting your best marketing channels, marketers must consider how the target audience will use each channel and choose the most relevant. To implement automated omnichannel marketing, there are three crucial steps marketers must follow. First, marketing channels must be chosen, such as social media or paid influencers, while considering how the target audience will engage with each source. Next, marketers must establish modeling and attribution to ensure the data is categorized and presented effectively. Lastly, marketers must complete regular data checks to confirm the accuracy, relevancy, and legitimacy of information, especially when data is constantly updating.

4: Serve appropriate content 

Another must-do when creating data-driven marketing is sharing appropriate content that aligns with the campaign’s focus and company goals. To do this, all previous steps must be met, specifically understanding your audience, as if not achieved, the content will be irrelevant. Marketing the right content involves two key elements. Firstly, it is important that marketers continually update the central marketing messages and adjust campaigns according to firm goals. Secondly, all marketing campaigns must be analysis-based marketing decisions. This means that rather than going with what competitors are doing, marketers must ignore the ‘noise’ and instead focus on what their data is saying. Effectively using and understanding what your specific data is saying helps determine what material works and doesn’t for your target audience at each stage of the purchasing process.

5: Track your campaigns

With the constant evolution of marketing, it’s crucial to continuously evaluate campaigns and advertising strategies from a data perspective to understand market opportunities. To track your campaign’s success or lack of success, marketers should use big data to analyze the ROI of their marketing techniques and use this data to guide future efforts. Making sure marketers and analysts keep track of marketing-related data is important as the results can be used to update key stakeholders on your progress and confirm what is and isn’t effective. Furthermore, by tracking the success of different data-driven strategies, marketers can use what they learn from data patterns to execute future campaigns. Tracking your marketing efforts is crucial to seeing your campaigns remain on track and progress is continually being moved.

 

Looking into the future, marketing in the next years will shift towards becoming increasingly data-driven. Interestingly, 71% of marketers will implement big data analytics into their marketing strategies in the coming three years. Thus, companies who can use insights obtained from the data they collect about their consumers will easily have an advantage over their competitors. Nowadays, data-driven marketing is a central technique in developing brand loyalty, giving companies a competitive advantage. These five steps to developing a data-driven marketing strategy allow today’s marketers to grow at rates like never before and understand greater depths of consumer needs.

If your business wants to develop a data-driven strategy bound for success, speak to our marketing consultants today.

 

5 Things That Marketing Degrees Will Not Teach You

  • On : April 27, 2021

I am currently in my final year of a marketing degree at University and amidst my first internship program. However, one sinister thing has quickly come to my attention… I really don’t know much.

This shocking and eye-opening realisation has left me feeling quite ill-prepared. I assumed what I was learning at university would be easily transferrable to the professional world, what a fool I was.

Whilst the experience of starting my first marketing internship has been exciting and more educational than my previous 3 years at university, I just wish I had something more to offer them.

A silver lining of this ordeal is that I have learnt I am not alone, and this feeling is quite abundant amongst university students. The Conversation outlined that only 37% of University students in later years felt that their studies have contributed to their work knowledge and skills.

Granted, theories and textbook lay the foundations of a proficient marketer, but in most instances, I have found they are not applicable in most real-life circumstances. Simply quoting a theory to your client will not magically grow their product.

This has led me to develop a list of things that I wish university had taught me about marketing in the real world.

 

Marketing strategies

The development of marketing strategies is crucial when first taking on a new product. Providing a clear and detailed strategy to present to your client as well as a guide to follow will help lay the foundations of a successful marketing campaign.

University has offered a brief opportunity to learn how to create a strategy, however, I have found that it’s quite useless and non-applicable. The assignments they give you are outdated and hold little relevance to the fast-changing marketing world.

Everyone creating a marketing plan for the same fake business does not sound like an individual and genuine learning experience. I was extremely overwhelmed when I realised that not all business structures, markets, and products fall in line with the blanket marketing strategy, learnt at University.

After learning this generic marketing strategy, I have no idea how to even implement it so that I can achieve my goals. This seems like a no-brainer for universities to teach as it is the logical next step.

Universities should be attempting to excite young and inexperienced marketing students and allowing them to develop specific strategies for companies they are connected to. This way students can gather advice from their expert tutors about where they have gone wrong and how it could have been done better.

 

Social Media Management

In my time studying marketing at university, it is criminal how much they avoid talking about the giant technological elephant in the room. The extreme lack of education towards social media management and strategizing is mind-boggling.

3.6 billion people use social media platforms, and this number is set to keep increasing to 4.41 billion in 2025 (Sprout Social). Something tells me that this may be a large audience that should be given more focus. However, it feels like University has tossed this to the wayside in favour of more traditional types of marketing.

One thing I have always known, even before studying marketing, is Social media is an efficient way to reach consumers. University should be acknowledging its power and preparing us for the marketing world of today, not yesterday.

I have now realised that a lot of small and medium-sized businesses cannot afford traditional styles of media. So social media marketing should become a priority. Providing students like myself with the tools to efficiently manage social media marketing is key to prepping them for the real world.

 

Blog Writing

It is a little ironic to be reading that the author of this blog submission, does not know how to write a blog. But, writing pieces such as blogs onto the long list of things my marketing degree did not prepare me for.

Blogs are integral for increasing a company’s visibility, which is important as it increases your interaction with consumers as well as strengthening your SEO. If your company continues to write relevant and engaging blogs then they are more likely to appear in searches, thus creating higher rates of traffic.

I had never even considered the importance of blogs when marketing before my internship, but now I see their value. Learning of this value I would have enjoyed one of my tutors or lecturers educating me on how to write in a blog format.

I would have thought facilitating engaging content would have been necessary to teach, but I guess tired and worn-out essay structures is what the consumer wants to read.

 

Analytic Platforms

Numbers. Some people love them, and some hate them. But you cannot discredit the importance that they hold when trying to successfully market a product.

However, whilst university tutors will explain what the numbers mean, they will not teach you how to use the platforms that they come on. Platforms such as Google and Facebook analytics are at the forefront of measuring the success of online marketing campaigns.

Being able to easily navigate and use these numbers to manage my marketing strategy best and effectively grow my audience would be a terrific asset to have. This should be a practical skill taught in a marketing degree, not something you learn on your first day of a job.

 

Networking

The university networking experience I gained was somewhat dismal. The cornerstone of university networking is a group assignment. The mention of a ‘group assignment’ is one sure way to strike fear into any student and bring back memories of pain.

However, this is the only type of networking they really teach. Networking is crucial in the world of business and can be the make or break of someone’s career. Whether it is with fellow staff members or clients, there needs to be more focus shifted on it.

How Marketers Are Adapting To A New Way Of Thinking

How Marketers Are Adapting To A New Way Of Thinking

  • On : February 8, 2021

In light of the pandemic, it has become nothing but obvious that businesses need to rethink their marketing strategies and digitalize their business. With many businesses shutting down in the last year, marketers are evolving and adopting a new way of thinking.

Businesses require to take immediate action and amend their marketing strategies to survive and thrive in the world. In 2021, businesses must create an online presence for each stakeholder involved in the B2B marketing process.

According to an article by McKinsey businesses now need to:

  • Rethink the state of their business as the new normal changes.
  • Conduct a SWOT analysis.
  • Define competitive advantage based on core competence.
  • Prioritize growth for faster impact.

Following are some of the marketing strategies B2Bs need to adapt in 2021 in order to be successful:

  1. Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing is the process where clients have a smooth experience with a business, regardless of the channel or device they use. Customer retention is also impacted by omnichannel marketing. It has been noted that businesses that adopt omnichannel strategies are achieving nearly 91% greater customer retention rates than those who don’t.

Businesses need to be presenting a consistent voice and message across all mediums, including digital channels such as websites and social media.

  1. Artificial Intelligence: Data

AI is no longer the future; it is here already. As data collection and transfer grows, AI has become important to business more than ever. According to Forbes, marketing and sales prioritize AI and machine learning higher than any other department in enterprises today (40%).

With data collection happening in real-time, businesses can make informed decisions to boost the ROI of their marketing strategies and campaigns. With AI in marketing, businesses can gain effective insights into the target audience and improve customer experience and communications.

  1. Content Marketing

With the continuous changes in marketing strategies over time, the importance of content marketing has remained consistent. While the manner in which customers consume content has changed (digital), it is still an effective way to attract new customers and build relationships with the existing clients to deliver value for the business.

Content marketing ensures your audience can consume your content on their preferred channel and device. Adapting to a multi-channel, multi-format approach to content marketing is a successful marketing strategy for B2B marketers.

  1. Understanding Micro-moments

A term created by Google, micro-moments relate to changing behaviors of customers, with their dependence on mobile devices. The act where a person turns to a mobile device with a need to learn, do, discover, watch, or buy something.

In 2021, marketers need to take advantage of these micro-moments to ensure their business can be found easily as the customer searches for information. Making it as easy and as quick for your target audience to find information and convert.

  1. Chatbots

With AI in view, people now prefer to speak with someone online than to talk on the phone with a customer representative. Live chats have become a norm, creating innovative means for customers to interact and gain information.

Chatbots have been proven to improve customer management and implement CTA for businesses, accelerating sales and distribution of the respective product or service.

  1. Predictive Analytics

Rolling back to data analytics, predictive analysis aims to predict the future based on the existing data collection and analysis technique. Predictive analysis allows marketers to utilize past marketing campaign data to evaluate industry trends and customer behaviour in the future. This process is undoubtedly effective and is being used by a number of businesses today.

Robotic Marketer can help your business with Marketing Strategies based on market research, including in-depth analysis of competitors. Our marketing consultants will ensure that you will receive the best robot-possible marketing strategy available in the world today.

Commonly Made Marketing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

Commonly Made Marketing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

  • On : December 16, 2020

There is a never-ending list of ways businesses can improve their marketing strategies. These lists make it easy to focus on what to do, though they seldom spend enough time placing emphasis on what not to do. Even the most experienced marketing executives trip up sometimes and make easily avoidable mistakes. We’ve identified some of the most commonly made mistakes in the industry to help you circumvent them. If you’ve already made some of these mistakes, don’t worry – we’re here to help you learn from them.

Poor research and a lack of testing

Making assumptions about your customer base is a surefire way to miss goals before you’ve even given yourself a chance of reaching them. Before the launch of any project or marketing campaign, devoting the resources to developing an informed understanding of your audience that is founded in substantial research can save you valuable time and money down the line. Having an idea of how your products and services will perform once your campaign is launched will help you set realistic and attainable goals. By identifying and eliminating ineffective ideas before they see the light of day, you can focus your energy on more promising aspects of the campaign. Given the multitude of research tools available to marketing executives today, there is no excuse to skimp on feedback surveys or trivialize trend analysis.

Broad targeting

A symptom of poor research is often targeting too broad an audience. In the age of targeted advertising, there is a wealth of data available to businesses that aid in the development of structurally sound customer profiles. As with inadequate research, making assumptions about your anticipated customer base is a common mistake that often overlooks the reality of your pre-existing clients and their loyalty to your brand. Worse, you risk losing them because you’re too busy chasing unrealistic leads. To avoid this, pair your research insights with your comprehensive customer profile and you’ll be far more likely to reach your campaign goals.

An unspecified USP

Your USP, or Unique Selling Proposition, is a single statement that sets you apart from the competition. It should make clear the gap in the market which your products or services fill, and directly address the needs of consumers in a way that your competitors are unable to. It is surprisingly common for businesses not to prioritize devising a strong USP. And yet without it, your customers will struggle to pick you out of a crowd of brands who are also competing for their attention. It is not enough to claim you are the best in the business. Rather, explain why this is the case, and how you set yourself apart from the rest of the industry. A USP is a crucial aspect of keeping your operations focused as it functions as a constant reminder of your target audience.

Devaluing customer retention

This is arguably the easiest mistake for marketers to make. Because burgeoning businesses are so often concerned with attracting new customers, they often miss valuable opportunities with their pre-existing ones. The potential growth of revenue by way of repeat business is certainly worth making a priority given that customer acquisition isn’t nearly as affordable or reliable as marketing to returning clients. In fact, selling to a new customer is five times as expensive as selling to an existing customer. In order to ensure that you are covering all segments of your market, try and match the resources used on gaining new clients to the resources used to take care of your pre-existing business.

Unwillingness to invest

We’ve all heard it before: you need to spend money to make money. And yet, clichés are clichés because, more often than not, they ring true. In a recent Score study, small business owners who listed marketing strategies as one of their top priorities also admitted to devoting negligible portions of their budget to actual marketing implementation. In retrospect, the majority of said business owners wished they had allocated at least twice the initial marketing budget prior to launch. While it is understandable that businesses opt to prioritize more pressing matters such as rent payments and payroll, undervaluing the capacity of effective marketing to reap long-term benefits to revenue and brand loyalty is certainly a missed opportunity.

Forgetting to track performance

While many businesses necessarily turn to data to devise their upcoming marketing campaigns, they often overlook the importance of tracking performance to date. The insights that tracking performance can offer are invaluable when it comes to setting realistic goals for imminent projects, as well as identifying areas for improvement before launch. Real-time insights into business performance make it easy to avoid unpleasant surprises and instead ensure that you are constantly in the know.

Resistance to change

Businesses, just like humans, need to adapt in order to survive. And, just like humans, some businesses often resist change in the name of staying in their comfort zones. But by doing so, they miss out on the valuable potential of change to beget growth. Resistance to new technology and marketing strategies puts you behind those more willing to experiment with different revenue channels, whereas businesses who are more open-minded to change are opening themselves up to a wider audience and greater potential profits as well as keeping up with the competition.